Most Dangerous Time for a Pilot Pilots are more likely to have an accident when landing than any

other time. Just a few fundamental blunders can result in such horrors as blown tires, ground-loops, skidding into a snow bank, or kicking up dust off the far end of the runway. The relationship between these easy-to-avoid mistakes and their horrid outcomes is often quite subtle. Flying with my friends in a pretty red, white, and blue Cessna 172, we were going for lunch at a small country airport in Northern Californias Central Valley. When I landed I thought that I had performed like a thousand-hour pilot. I felt great. The glow disappeared a few seconds later when a gust picked me up and put me on a taxiway. I almost panicked when I saw another plane taxiing toward me. I will always remember the half-smile and shaking head of the other pilot as he waited for me to taxi clear. I hoped that my passengers did not understand what might have happened. Flying the approach, I had made the three most common landing errors. As soon as I could, I started analyzing and researching this region of flight until I was certain that I understood and could prevent any thing remotely similar. The NTSB tells us that 45% of all the meteorologically caused problems stem from crosswinds or gusts. Much more than 45% seemed reasonable to me then. I want to tell you about some very straightforward techniques, that, had I mastered them, would have kept me out of trouble. I think these techniques will make more sense to you if I intertwine them with the causes of landing incidents. If your planes nose it high enough or low enough, a gust cannot take you off the runway. My mistake was that the nose was neither high enough nor low enough. When the wind gusted, the wings lift put us back in the air. A wing can produce no lift if its angle is in one of two regions. A wing that is not pitched up at all produces no lift. Likewise, a wing tilted up above its critical angle of attack produces no lift. If you keep your airplane off the runway until it cannot fly any more, then the wing will be pitched up above a stall angle and no gust can make it fly again. With the plane in a level attitude after landing, a strong gust will not pick it up. But what about the situation when the wind blows from the side? A strong crosswind creates a problem for the pilot by either pushing the plane to the side faster than the pilot is slipping into the wind or overpowering the landing gears traction once the plane is on the ground. If you always cross control the airplane properly during crosswind landings, you will stay on the runway every time. Use ailerons to center the plane over the runway and rudders to align it with the runway. This way you know that your airplane will always stay in the middle of the runway. Cross controlling is an under valued and under taught technique. Controlling the approach glide is essential in preventing landing too far down the runway or landing too fast. Mastering the approach glide can prevent more problems than I can count. Anyone can control an approach glide very easily. As you glide toward the runway, keep in mind two very important principles. Changes in pitch attitude impact airspeed almost immediately. Power changes result in glide path changes almost immediately but slowly change airspeed.

You have no hope of flying repeatable, precise approaches if you do not maintain constant airspeed by changing pitch and power at the same time. Remember: pitch down when you power down to maintain constant indicated airspeed. Project your glide to your sweet spot on the runway at a constant airspeed by adjusting power and pitch at the same time. Lets examine an approach step-by-step. Well say that your approach speed in landing configuration is 60 KIAS. Your glide projects to a point 500 feet short of the runway threshold. You know that the best place to glide toward is the base of the runway numbers. You add two hundred revolutions to the engine and pitch up slightly to project your glide farther. You discover that you have over corrected. You now shorten your glide ever so gently by backing off 100 RPM and dropping your nose very slightly keeping your IAS at a steady sixty. Almost unconsciously and very gently, you either add power and pitch up or reduce power and pitch down to stay at sixty and on the glide path. You will arrive at the right place, in the right configuration and airspeed to make landing to brag about. So the three things that you need to do are to control your approach glide precisely, cross control before and after landing, and keep her flying as long as you can after you flare.